I used to think home was one place

I used to think home was one place. One city, one routine, one version of my life that made sense and stayed relatively the same.

Even after living in different countries, I always assumed I would eventually “settle” somewhere. That there would be a default. A place everything revolved around. Now I’m not so sure that idea holds anymore or even why I was always so attached to it.

We build our lives around one version of stability. One place, one rhythm, one way of doing things. We look around us and follow what feels normal, and as human beings we naturally gravitate toward predictability. It makes things easier to plan, easier to explain, easier to control.

Now my life stretches across two places

Now, part of my life stretches between Montreal and Spain. It doesn’t feel like two separate lives; it feels like one life, just experienced differently depending on where I am.

In Montreal, everything is structured. Workdays, daycare drop-offs, routines that run almost on autopilot. I know where everything is, how everything works, what the week will look like before it even starts.

In Spain, everything slows down. Mornings stretch a little longer, evenings don’t feel rushed, and dinner isn’t something you fit in – it’s something you sit through. The days feel less scheduled, even when they’re full.

At first, the contrast felt exciting. Now, it feels… normal. In many ways, it feels like the kind of life I had always been trying to build without fully realizing it.

What I didn’t expect is how strange that in-between feeling can be. When I’m in Montreal, I miss Spain: the pace, the sunshine the way the day unfolds more naturally. When I’m in Spain, I miss Montreal: the structure, the familiarity, the ease of knowing exactly how everything works.

Motherhood made that feeling more real. Because now it’s not just about me moving between places; it’s about what “home” looks like for my daughter. What feels stable to her, what becomes normal, what she’ll remember later on.

The shift I didn’t expect

The biggest shift wasn’t having more than one place that feels like home. It was realizing I didn’t have to build my life around just one version of it.

That idea that everything has to happen in one place, one way started to feel less like a rule and more like an assumption I had never really questioned.

Living between places isn’t just a lifestyle change, it’s a mindset shift. It comes with trade-offs, a lot of logistics, constant adjustments, and decisions that don’t always feel obvious at the time. There’s no perfect balance, no version where everything fits neatly into place.

But what I’m realizing more and more is that a lot of the things we assume are fixed, where we live, how we structure our lives, what home is supposed to look like, are actually more flexible than we allow them to be. We just don’t question them often enough.

I’m still figuring it out. But I do know this: I don’t think I’d want to go back to having just one version of my life. Because the biggest shift isn’t deciding where to live, it’s realizing we don’t have to choose just one way to live at all.

For those curious about how we’ve built this part of our life between Montreal and Spain, I’ve been sharing more here: www.lavistaandaluza.com